4 min readUpdated: May 29, 2026 12:24 PM IST
Obsession movie review: Boy likes girl. What next? A lot of possible romances end right here. But what happens when the shy boy gets one miracle wish that can turn romance into a love story.
A YouTuber on the road to fame after Obsession wowed audiences at Toronto International Film Festival, and got horror impresario Jason Blum onboard as executive producer, director Curry Barker is all of 26. He is also the writer of this tragi-comic horror film, with Cooper Tomlinson who plays one of the key characters, his long-time collaborator.
Barker taps right into Gen Z’s au courant crisis and places Obsession in the irresolute territory where love is an all-consuming but never-consummate emotion. Relationships are situationships, and situations are at the mercy of just too many things. Commitment is a word – and world – too long.
So when Bear (Michael Johnston) thinks he is in love with Nikki (Navarrette), a friend and work mate, he doesn’t know what to say that won’t sound too needy or risk a rejection. Even when she comes right out and asks him, Bear hesitates, with each waiting for the other to take the leap.
Could a ‘One Wish Willow’ that Bear has chanced upon be the answer? The shopkeeper who sells it to Bear suggests there have been “complaints”, without specifying what, but he decides to take a chance.
And, lo and behold, Nikki is what Bear wished her to be – a girl who “loves me more than anyone else in the whole world”.
Watch Obsession movie trailer here:
Barker stages the transformation with creepy effect as Nikki (a very impressive Navarrette) changes into another being altogether – prone to standing in shadows and silhouettes, and popping up or lashing out unexpectedly. A lot is left unsaid but effectively and scarily implied in how Nikki just stands in the corner of the room, or speaks with just her eyes strategically lit, or has the light-and-dark play across her face suggesting a grotesqueness underneath.
Story continues below this ad
Bear (Johnston, effective), who is anyway unsure about how much of Nikki’s now obsessive feelings for him are organic, grows more and more nervous. There is a subversiveness here, about the male partner in a toxic relationship being the traumatised one, afraid to move an inch or leave the house without offering an explanation.
The problem is that Barker doesn’t know how to flesh this out into a feature length. Once the premise is established, the group of Bear and Nikki, and their friends Ian (Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless), seem to go over the same lines and scenarios again and again. A poor cat is an unnecessary collateral.
It’s also preposterous that there is no outside intervention by any party in a day and age when one of Bear’s biggest fears is that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Nikki would have an eager audience if she claims that he is “taking advantage of her”.
As the elders in the room would say, be careful what you wish for.
Story continues below this ad
Obsession movie cast: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless
Obsession movie director: Curry Barker
Obsession movie rating: 3 stars
